IBM, Honda and PG&E Create Smart Charging System for Electric Cars

By Pradeep Chandrasekaran on 04/12/2012 11:23 PDT

As we know, electric cars are extremely good for the environment and as technology advances, they are slowly becoming as efficient if not more efficient than its petrol guzzling counterparts. Even then, electric vehicles have their own share of problems. The first one is the strain of a large quantity of electric cars being charged at the same time on the power grid. Fortunately, yet another joint development has come forth in the electrical transportation industry.

IBM, Honda and PG&E have come together to create a smart charging system that will help power providers like PG&E optimize the power demand needed. In addition, the technology will be using an in-car communications system in Honda Fit EV cars to link it up to the power grid. This means that when a car is plugged in, a charge request is sent to the energy provider. After collecting information from the electric vehicle, PG&E will be able to manage how much power to put towards charging each vehicle and can time it more efficiently across the board. The tricky part comes during the information collection stage which requires a middleman of sorts and this is where IBM comes in.

The company’s ‘Electric Vehicle Enablement Platform’ which handles the sending and receiving of information from either side and communicates the most ideal charging schedule for the car. The whole process between all three parties happens within just a few seconds. While this is not exactly a new concept, it’s good to see the detail to which the technology has been developed and adopted by three separate companies to ensure that if there is a steep demand of electric vehicles in the future, our homes and offices will be safe from electrical blackouts.